IBT Staff Reporter

Nokia Oyj, the world's top cellphone maker, took a major writedown at its struggling networks unit on Thursday and revealed a fall in smartphone sales, sending its shares down 11 percent.

New guidelines on protecting hospital workers against the H1N1 swine flu stress keeping influenza patients away from others and put protective equipment such as face masks last.

Charles Schwab Corp said on Thursday its quarterly profit fell 34 percent, meeting expectations, as fee waivers and lower trading by clients continued to weigh on the leading U.S. online brokerage.

South Korea's LG Telecom said on Thursday that its board had approved a plan to merge with LG Dacom and LG Powercom on January 1, 2010.

As the recession takes a bite out of video games sales in the stores, consumers are opting to download more games to save money while keeping themselves entertained.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion is launching a new version of its touchscreen Storm smartphone, marking its latest move in the fight with Apple's iPhone.

Southwest Airlines posted a third-quarter net loss on Thursday on charges for its employee buyout program and fuel hedging portfolio, and said it expected cost pressures to persist in the fourth quarter.

Hon Hai Group, parent of Hon Hai and Foxconn, will invest more than $1 billion to build a production facility in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, sources and the company said.

A U.S. cap-and-trade market on greenhouse gases should be designed carefully to avoid unfair economic pain in fossil fuel industries and other parts of the economy, experts told lawmakers on Wednesday.

Citigroup Inc posted a quarterly per-share loss as it suffered $8 billion of credit losses, raising questions about when the bank can return to sustained profitability.

The New York Times Co said it has given up its plan to sell The Boston Globe and related businesses after drastic cuts it imposed on the daily newspaper earlier this year improved its financial position.

Wall Street fell on Thursday after quarterly results from Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup Inc failed to live up to expectations of some investors a day after major indexes rallied to yearly highs.

British firm OMG announced it had received licensing from Microsoft to launch a small digital camera aimed at helping people with memory loss, boosting its shares on Thursday.

The French nuclear safety watchdog ASN has suspended work dismantling a plutonium technology plant over worker safety fears, after almost three times as much plutonium was found at the site than expected.

Hedge funds and private equity could face more than 3 billion euros of costs while investors could see fund choice shrink by up to 40 percent due to proposed new EU rules, a Financial Services Authority report said.

Travel reservations giant Amadeus has hired a trio of banks as global bookrunners for a planned initial public offering (IPO) next year, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Dry shipper Genco Shipping & Trading Ltd has filed plans to take a recently formed subsidiary public in an offering of up to $230 million.

Exchange operator Nasdaq OMX said on Wednesday it will launch a third trading venue that caters to listings that fall below the standards of its main Nasdaq Stock Market and other markets.

Private equity houses, including U.S. firms Blackstone and KKR, are showing greater flexibility in approaching target assets as they face more pressure to deploy their capital, an M&A banker said.

Citigroup Inc posted a quarterly per-share loss as it suffered $8 billion of credit losses, raising questions about when the bank can return to sustained profitability.

Oil rose toward $76 a barrel on Thursday, its sixth straight session of gains in spite of a brief midsession stumble as the euro fell on disappointing Q3 earnings reports, traders said.

Investors holding 24 percent of shares in videoconferencing firm Tandberg snubbed a $3 billion bid from Cisco Systems Inc, raising prospects of a higher offer from the U.S. network equipment maker.

Banking group OCBC clinched a deal to buy Dutch-based ING Group NV's private banking unit in Asia for $1.5 billion in a deal which would elevate it to Singapore's second-ranked bank by assets.

RHJ International is to buy UK wealth management unit Kleinwort Benson from Commerzbank for 225 million pounds ($359.5 million), the latest in a flurry of private banking sales.

Stocks fell on Thursday after a survey showed regional factory activity grew less than expected in October, and quarterly results from Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup Inc underwhelmed investors.

Miner Xstrata Plc has given up its pursuit of rival Anglo American, it announced on Thursday, leaving Anglo to push ahead with its own restructuring plan and raising questions about whether Xstrata will revisit former target Lonmin.

Supermarket chain Safeway Inc posted quarterly profit that beat Wall Street expectations as it cut costs to help counteract declining food prices, sending its shares up nearly 8 percent on Thursday.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said on Thursday he was investigating last month's deadly crackdown on opponents of Guinea's military ruler, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara.

The long-term goal for the biofuels industry will be to use nonfood sources for raw materials rather than grains, but to reach that goal industry must build on and not abandon current technology, biofuels giant Archer Daniels Midland said on Wednesday.